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The CEO of Technology Marketing Toolkit speaks with ChannelPro from the green room of her annual IT sales and marketing boot camp about MSP concerns, the importance of fundamentals, and the quest to raise $1 million for St. Jude Hospital for Children.

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Tech Data will roll out more managed security services over the months ahead in an bid to help VARs become managed service providers, and managed service providers become managed security service providers.

“Almost every other meeting I’m having with one of our VAR partners, they’re telling me that they’re either calling themselves an MSSP at this point or trying to become an MSP of some type,” Ryals says. “So one thing you’re going to see from Tech Data this coming year is more of a focus on building solutions like this StratoZen/Fortinet hardware-as-a-service offering that we can take to these historically VAR partners who are now trying to be an MSP or MSSP provider.”

Ryals, without providing specifics, suggests that those forthcoming services will involve complex functions like incident response and threat intelligence. “Those categories of security require specialized resources,” Ryals notes, and those resources are costlier than most channel pros can afford.

Tech Data has managed services for functions beyond security in the works as well, Ryals adds. “Obviously, my job is to create MSSPs because I run security, but it’s a recurring theme among our VAR channel.”

The new Encryptics service allows users to encrypt and encode data at creation, in transit, in use, and at rest on any platform. A hardware-free, software-as-a-service product, the Encryptics platform is designed to help organizations safely distribute sensitive information beyond the firewall.

“You can even protect and encrypt data in third-party cloud services like Box or Dropbox,” Ryals says. “They provide a real unique way to think about encrypting information that leaves the corporate network.”

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With each issue packed full of powerful news, reviews, analysis, and advice targeting IT channel professionals, ChannelPro-SMB will help you cultivate your SMB customers and run your business more profitably.